CHAPTER 141 – Endless Night
Rage. I have used that word before.
Repeatedly, I have characterised Saphienne and those around her as feeling rage, including outrage at circumstance. This was no error, for describing anger would have been insufficient to convey the appropriate intensity of emotion. Nor would the unrestrained anger of fury have been hot enough; as fury is to anger, so I conceive rage is to fury.
What lies beyond rage? What word is to rage, as rage is to fury, as fury is to anger?
Whatever the word, it would not suffice for what was then lit in Saphienne. I do not believe any utterance could express what burned in her as she came back to herself from the void hollowed by Tolduin. Were every elf in the woodlands to throw back their heads in unfettered howls that gave voice to an inchoate yet agonised ire; were the entire world to be bathed in scouring scarlet by a shape that usurped the sun; were space itself to fray away before a loosed, consuming, crimson spiral that dissolved all consciousness; then still the appropriate symbol would lie beyond reach.
No, rage is but a sigil, anchoring a truth too transcendental to grasp.
Let us pretend she merely raged.
Saphienne raged at what had been done. Monumental wrong had been visited on her, eclipsing that which Kylantha had suffered; to be exiled from the woodlands as a child would at least have allowed her selfhood to continue. Fascination was a violation shallow and tepid compared to the oceanic depravity in which she had been drowned. From the moment of her betrayal, all through the sham trial, during her assault and subsequent blank silence, into the months of feeble recovery, and then the years of passive obedience, they had made of her a shadow dancing on a wall.
She remembered every waking moment.
That was not to say she felt as though she had awoken. She did not feel as though she had been dreaming, did not perceive that she had emerged from a nightmare. Saphienne was exactly as she had been before she saw the book, only now a horrifying self-awareness had flooded into the cavity in her skull, recontextualising her entire life in its brutal totality.
They had done worse than murder her. Their ‘kindness’ was more obscene than rape.
And the suffering did not end with her flesh. Those who loved her had been caught up, made to witness her witlessness…
Yet they had done nothing. Not one elf or spirit had tried to rescue her.
Not Athidyn, who had acknowledged the debt incurred by her heroism; not Nelathiel or Holly, who had each spoken so wisely about how precious her life was; not Gaelyn or Spire, who had together sworn an oath to care for her wellbeing; not Rophana, who believed she was belovèd by the gods; not Gaeleath, who had been so moved to see her art flourish; not Jorildyn, who had been proud to teach her to stand for herself; not Ruddles, who detested unending imprisonments; not Eletha, who had so greatly loved her antecedent; not Illimun, whose daughter she had saved from loneliness; not Celaena, who had once readily employed violence to protect her; not Taerelle, who had guided her from misery; not any of the caring people who had surrounded her with fond regard — not even Iolas, who at least had attempted to avenge her.
Syndelle and Faylar and her mother were blameless, for they too were imprisoned in a travesty of compassion. Yet what of Hyacinth? What of Laelansa? Where had vanished their love for her, to forsake her so? Why had Minina – poor, innocent, childlike Minina – been the only one to try?
Absolute betrayal made a mockery of her principles. All those countless hours, agonising about what was right and wrong, about what was owed, about the social contract — only to end up forgotten and alone, cried for, mourned, yet ultimately discarded.
Her deepest rage was for herself. Saphienne had been treated as she had treated Kylantha, treated Kob. She could no longer pretend at having been anything but self-serving, inured to the injuries inflicted by her inaction. She had let the innocent be taken, and that letting was an abandonment that could never be forgiven.
And who had taught her to live like this? The same woman who had betrayed her to the Wardens of the Wilds.
Rage. Saphienne felt rage; and her most hateful rage was reserved for Filaurel.
This is what she felt within, sculpting a wooden toad in the tented pavilion.
* * *
Alas, all she could do was feel. The causes of her feelings eluded her in their enormity, beyond her capacity to contemplate…
For her mind remained broken.
Saphienne knew she was alone. She knew she was hurting. She knew that her thoughts were fragmented, coming slower than they ought to. Every instinct she had screamed at her to lash out — but she also knew she was in immense danger, that being noticed would only invite further harm.
She didn’t know what to do.
Bereft of her intellect, she retained her habitual behaviours, and so restrained herself from acting impulsively.
Her hands worked to carve the statue. She tried to reason through her situation.
Several minutes later, her first observation arrived: running wouldn’t succeed.
Nor would hiding, she concluded after a pause.
She couldn’t explain why.
Half an hour hence she recognised that she was too enraged to decide on a course of action with confidence. She had to wait until the anguish inside subsided. Once she was clearheaded, she could think analytically about her predicament.
Another hour elapsed, and she began to suspect that she was impaired by more than passion, that she was injured in a way that was indelible. This frightened her, which only worsened her mood, against which she clung harder to her conviction that she should do nothing that would draw attention.
Carve the toad; go home with Sundamar; eat dinner; prepare for bed; sleep until morning; do as she was told. Following her routine was the safest course, taking care along the way to guard against discovery by her malefactors. She would feign tranquillity.
As noon approached, she reaffirmed that she needed to calm down, and added that she should try to understand what Tolduin’s enchantment had done to her. What was a sculptor? Did the name imply anything?
She needed until the end of the day to make the connection between the name and what she was doing to the wood she shaped.
* * *
There was one small act Saphienne couldn’t resist.
“Good evening, my darling– oh! Did you miss me?”
She hugged her mother very tightly.
“Sundamar,” Lynnariel asked, worried, “did something happen?”
He paused where he was hanging his cloak by the door, retaining the short bow he wore over his shoulder along with the quiver of arrows against his thigh. “…She tried to read today. She might be upset that she couldn’t: the frog she made afterward was a mess.”
Lynnariel stroked Saphienne’s back. “Are you upset, my darling?”
She forced herself to keep her pain from her voice. “No.”
“Were you upset? Before we hugged?”
And to lie. “I don’t know.”
Sundamar chuckled at her as he went through to the kitchen. “Sounds like she’s fine; I’ll let Master Almon know that she showed an interest in one of the books he approved.”
Lynnariel held on to her daughter as she called to him. “What was it about?”
“Amphibians; a child’s book.” He filled the kettle as he answered. “The frog on the cover caught her eye. She must have spent an hour looking through the illustrations, then she set it aside and went back to her usual…”
Hugging for too long risked suspicion. Saphienne released her mother, then waited to be told what she should do.
Lynnariel scrutinised her carefully, perhaps sensing from their embrace that there was more to the story than Sundamar had guessed. If so, she didn’t betray anything. “Would you like to play?”
Saphienne nodded.
“Go and play, darling.”
She went upstairs to her bedroom, there to sit on the floor and sketch frogs until dinnertime.
* * *
There were no exercises with her fascinator that night. She bathed instead, mutely going through the motions of ineptitude in caring for herself, then sat for her mother to brush out her damp hair while Myrinel relieved Sundamar.
Interesting: the quiver of arrows was passed to Myrinel. That was important. Saphienne couldn’t discern why, but the arrows were somehow special.
“Say goodnight to Sundamar, darling.”
She was glad she wasn’t expected to smile. “Goodnight.”
He waved as he headed out into the wintry dark. “See you tomorrow.”
Lynnariel tucked her into bed soon after. All through the night, until the next day, Saphienne did nothing but lie upon her bed and breathe, her empty hand aching for want of the pouch and coin that once had soothed her inconsolable fury.
* * *
Days passed in simmering contempt. She slept dreamlessly on the second night and each thereafter, but immediately upon rising the redness that consumed her would arise in turn, coiling to gaze with venom from behind her studiously vacant stare.
Her magic was gone. Saphienne recognised the loss on the second day, when she reclined with her mother and rotely repeated pitiful phrases by the glow of the fascinator, gradually fathoming that the enchantment provoked no sensation in her chest.
She resisted the fascinating pink light. She didn’t submit even when her mother read to her afterward, too tense to find any warmth in the familiar story.
Her guess was that Tolduin had damaged her brain. She had memories of Laelansa that weren’t true, fragile beside the searing recollections of Kylantha. He had tried to cut out her childhood friend, filling the gaps left with another girl she loved. However the process had unfolded, he had made a mistake, and she had suffered a series of seizures that had left her limp and mindless; this much, she could infer from conversations she had overheard between the priests to Our Lady of the Basking Serpent.
Four days were spent piecing together that narrative. Three more drifted by before she recognised her cognition had fundamentally degraded, which made her rage almost unendurable for the three subsequent. By the dawn of the tenth she was miserable, subsiding into heated despair that the lengthening hours of darkness did little to alleviate.
Although she tried to console herself that she was simply slower now, the truth was bleak: her cognition had lost all agility. With patience and perseverance she could grasp the obvious and superficial, the ‘what’ that she beheld, but causes and consequences were as ghosts in a midnight clearing, veiled beyond her insight.
What else could she do? She kept to what was expected, night following desolate night, adding to the mountain of frogs behind the tent, yearning for someone – anyone, even the inexistent and indifferent gods – to drag her out of hell.
For when the month was done, a demon would visit her again.
* * *
Eleven days before she was to meet Tolduin, while listening to her mother make pleasant conversation with Sundamar during dinner, Saphienne accepted that she was doomed. The green light would again wipe away her consciousness, and she would sink back into a living oblivion.
By the time the wardens watching her had switched, she barely had the will to live.
…No. Saphienne wouldn’t seek death again. She refused.
That was why, when she finished feigning her exercises, she snuggled close to her mother and let the pacifying fascination permeate her mind, seizing what meagre good she might find in her last gasp of personhood, willing herself to find comfort in the childhood story of the girl by the sea, pretending that she was little and that all was well.
“‘… Seen up close, the water was soft green when the waves rose, bubbling when they surged against the stones. She liked the hiss of the surf in her long ears …’”
Except she couldn’t deceive herself. She’d been able to think more fluidly as a child; the images of her imagination hadn’t required a fascinator to be rendered clearly. She was blunted, her horns shorn off, her scales flensed away.
As the tale lovingly droned on she wondered what she would have thought, if her past self were able to see herself as she’d become. Saphienne tried to envision who she’d been, when she’d been whole…
Beguiling ribbons wove and knitted in her mind’s eye, shimmering like a veil draped over a figure sitting on the end of the bed, cohering into blue and green robes, running together into rivulets of long blonde hair, curving into a flicking tail and regal horns, until Saphienne beheld herself sitting with legs crossed and lips twisted, pupils glinting in distaste where she appraised the wreck of a self who invoked her.
“What a tragic excuse for a dragon,” the vision said, scornful — though not of her. “To think I’ve been reduced to imbecility is outrageous; to hell with Tolduin and the rest of them! They’ve erased everything about me that was beautiful, and for what? To play games with my remains? To dress me up like a doll, and have my mother pretend we’re a happy little family?” Her phantasmal self snorted. “I think not! This was a murder in all but name, tacitly ordered by the Luminary Vale.”
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As Saphienne watched, the woman she had been stood and began to pace, talons clicking on the floor where they protruded from her boots.
“Fools! Cowards! Elduin, Lenitha, all of the High Masters: they destroyed me because they feared. What if I had grown to become their equal in the Great Art? What if I was the dragon I claimed to be? Wouldn’t I come back, as Lonareath had done? Wouldn’t I fight to overthrow them? To insist they bow to my might, and the woodlands submit to my rulership?” The illusory Saphienne hissed, anger in her amusement. “That’s all they could conceive, because that’s all that lives in them. They conspire together, keeping the woodlands subjugated to their ‘kind’ stewardship — no matter the cost in lives. They can’t imagine someone would choose otherwise.”
Flourishing in her fury, the Saphienne who had once been stalked to the bed, crouching down to stroke the cheek of her shambolic reality. “You didn’t deserve this! You weren’t a threat to them; you tried so hard not to be your pain and anger, to be more than the wounds they inflicted.” Her head bowed, horn pressing against Saphienne’s ruined temple. “But now look at us… you, hardly able to thread two thoughts together… and me, nothing more than your imagined–”
Saphienne – real and unreal – blinked.
“…How am I able to speak like this?”
The radiant mirage raised and canted her head, studying Saphienne where she gazed into the fascinator.
“You can’t think like this, not anymore. If I’m just an apparition of your mind – evoked by the fascinator – then how is it possible that I’m coherent?”
Then her reptilian eyes widened, and the imaginary dragon took to her feet in alarm. “But, if I’m just a fiction… then if you stop picturing me…”
The daydream clasped her frilled ears, massaging them.
“Stop panicking. Logically, if I’m being imagined by you, which I must be if I’m appearing thanks to a fascinator, then I’m not a simple figment. I’m more like Peacock: an element of your mind – our mind – that’s being expressed through magic. That means…”
Past Saphienne sat on the bed, clasping a real wrist with spectral claws.
“I know thinking is hard, but you’re good at doing what you’re told; listen carefully.” Her pinching fear was palpable. “In a moment, you’re going to look away from the fascinator, still trying to imagine me. Then, you’re going to look back. If I’m right…”
While resolute, her fanged smile was weak.
“And if not? I love you, Saphienne. Now, look away.”
Saphienne did as she commanded herself–
And at once only her mother was with her, gently narrating.
A minute later, she returned her gaze to the fascinator.
This time, when the fanciful representation of herself shimmered into place, the horned woman was flushed with relief. “That proves it: I’m definitely you. I remember everything that happened during the gap, and my perception of myself is continuous across both instances. I’m some part of you that still has your wits — the fascinator is enabling your self-reflection.” She stared up at the ceiling, laughing as she threw wide her arms. “That means there’s hope! We may be alone, but we’re not helpless!”
Lynnariel was coming toward the end of the chapter.
“…We don’t have time tonight.” The projection knelt over Saphienne on the bed. “You made the right decision by keeping quiet. Continue, and when our mother next reads to you, imagine me again. Between now and then, assuming I come from within you, I’ll figure this out, and what the implications are.” Her gaze hardened. “Don’t let them discover you. Our only advantage is surprise. Play dead, Saphienne. Act like an idiot. We will recover, and when we do–”
The enchantment dimmed, Lynnariel having concluded and flipped the gemstone over within its ring.
“I love you,” said Saphienne, to herself.
This startled Lynnariel, who was unused to Saphienne speaking without prompting; her eyes watered. “I love you too, darling! Did you like the story tonight?”
“Yes.”
“You were more absorbed than usual… would you like me to read to you again tomorrow?”
Myrinel was downstairs; Saphienne took the risk of leaning up to kiss her mother’s cheek in unspeakable gratitude.
* * *
“This is your best frog yet,” Gaeleath complimented her, turning the sculpture over as they walked with her behind the tent. “You worked with the grain this time… did you intend to do that?”
Be cautious. “I don’t know what that is.”
Sundamar patted her back. “Do you want to learn?”
What she wanted was to go home and eat dinner, and for Sundamar to fuck off for the night so she could fake her exercises with the fascinator and then revisit herself. “Yes.”
Gaeleath stopped before the field of stone and wood, brushing snow and ice from one of the older statues as they began to explain. “You see these patterns? They show the way the tree grew …”
Saphienne pretended to care. When they offhandedly pointed to the discarded pieces, she followed the artist’s gesture, struck by the revelation that their work truly was as they’d once described: not abandoned, only unfinished.
* * *
“‘… Every one of these pebbles was once a great rock, maybe even a mountain. But the waters are older than the earth, and they wear on it, making cliffs into pebbles, and pebbles into sand …’”
Lynnariel knew the story so well that she didn’t need to read the pages, and she performed for her daughter with enthusiasm.
Where the reverie of Saphienne was standing at the bottom of the bed, she listened for a moment. “She really does love us. Ignoring the story makes me feel guilty…”
Her tail swept the floor as she spun to stride back and forth.
“…But she would understand, wouldn’t she? We don’t have time for comforts. Tolduin arrives in ten days, and we need a solution to his sculptor. But first we need to understand exactly how I’m here talking to you — how you’re able to talk to yourself.”
The dragon steepled her claws.
“I didn’t exist when you weren’t using the fascinator, so I wasn’t actively thinking, but I feel like I’ve been sleeping on it. Let’s see if I can phrase an explanation.” Her hair fanned out behind her whenever she pivoted from window or wall. “I remember the formulation of the enchantment on fascinators. The spells combine the disciplines of Fascination and Hallucination, utilising the same principles that produce figments, though in a simpler way. When one consents to its fascinating effect, a fascinator reorders the mind so that what is imagined is presented as physical perception, supplemented by minor, entirely personal hallucinations to make it more believable.”
She halted.
“…Not just by hallucinations. Like with figments, the fascinator draws on unconscious knowledge: the experience appears more real the closer it is in content to past encounters. Yet memory alone cannot explain my ability to reason, can it? I’m engaged in conjecture, and doing so despite your present infirmity.”
Her claws tapped a rhythm.
“Let’s approach this another way.” The mirage of a magician settled down on the floor, crossing her legs. “How is it that your memories survived what Tolduin did? We need to consider the sculptor — draw on the apparent parallels between its design and that of the fascinator. Both are comprised of gemstones set within metal rings, and both activate when the gemstones are flipped within said rings; both use light to facilitate their spells gaining purchase on the mind, entering with the observation; whereas the gems of fascinators are coloured the violet and blue of Fascination and Hallucination, we can reasonably presume the green and white of sculptors are Transmutation and Divination.”
Her tail coiled around her waist, squeezing herself in reassurance.
“Unlike a fascinator, a sculptor’s effects are directed. For now, let’s further assume that holding the enchantment was what placed Tolduin in control; he was able to direct the magic to alter my – rather, our – mind. I recall it was like reliving my memories… like a dream… except I became more lucid the longer it went on. He was changing what I recollected, but I fought against him, like we were arguing over a story.”
Narrowing her eyes, she bared her teeth.
“I escaped him. I ran for the library, where my memory of Kylantha was strongest: I blocked him out when he tried to enter. Yet the Kylantha I met there wasn’t just a memory, but the same part of myself I encounter whenever I–”
Abruptly, her sharp mouth grinned.
“…I’m recollecting these events in great detail, aren’t I? Which is odd: they were symbolic expressions of my unconscious being. I remember them along with similar instances, previously hazy, such as when I cast the transmutation to heal my damaged mind.” She faced the concentrating Saphienne who cuddled her mother. “You’re not the one imagining me! You’re trying to, and the fascinator is supplementing the details with knowledge from your unconscious self. That’s where I come from…”
Her laugh was high and jubilant.
“Kylantha is my author! The part of you nourished by her memory! She survived the collapse of the library, but she’s sealed away. The magic is making a bridge between your waking and slumbering selves.” She leapt up, almost dancing as she swayed across the floor. “When my mind started to fray, I was staring at Filaurel’s desk, where she keeps her sweets locked away from view. That’s what gave me the idea: I took Kylantha – took myself – to the book I most associate with her, and willed myself to remember everything that flowed from there. I hid her inside its pages, entrusting myself to the unbreakable bond between sensation and memory, gambling that Tolduin wouldn’t risk killing me by interfering with my lower, libidinal brain.”
The dragon bowed before the world, accepting the accolade due her success.
“Hyacinth spoke truly: every part of my mind is interconnected. So long as an iota of myself remains, the patterns within can repeat and magnify. The sculptor may suffice against the flesh of elves — but I am no elf!”
Yet her brow was furrowed when she straightened.
“…He scarred my brain. Vestaele was wrong: the healing Transmutation spells he cast when I was bleeding did me harm. They, too, were not made for dragons.” She approached, feeling Saphienne’s brow with the scaled back of her hand. “What happened to the part of my brain that controlled my left hand has been inflicted once more, except he damaged my higher reasoning. Like before, new connections are forming, but they’re impeded by the scars. I can’t fully regenerate while they’re in place. Nor can I burn them away and immediately heal, not without my magic and drake’s blood.”
Briefly, Saphienne quailed, the imagined reflection dissipating.
When she resumed picturing her, the fiction bestowed a kiss. “Don’t let yourself be frightened! You’re alive: they couldn’t extinguish your fire. What you face now is only a challenge to be overcome. If we can endure our next meeting with Tolduin, we’ll have all the time we need.”
Lynnariel was finishing her recital.
“…Which comes next. Let me think on it. Trust that – while you’re befuddled – there’s a part of you that labours unceasingly to solve the problem.” The dragon rose. “You won’t be bested by any elf; we will be whole again. Bless him for his righteous anger, but we shan’t need Iolas to avenge us.”
* * *
“No, Saphienne: with the grain. Like this. See?”
“Yes.”
“Much easier, isn’t it?”
“…Yes.”
* * *
From before the pallid sunrises until after the bloodless sunsets, she bent her few faculties to the fashioning of frogs, become more skilful since her rousing, vigilant against revealing her competence, playful with the mistakes she made. Hope had restored to her a glint of the rebellion that had once sparkled in her movements, and the bleaching winter couldn’t drain away the disdain for her captors she hewed into the wood.
After dark, submerged in the pink tide, she conferred with herself.
“We won’t get far without magic; escape is impossible. Were we to take desperate action, with a supremely excellent plan, you’d still be easily outmanoeuvred the instant you encountered an unpredicted occurrence. No, stealth is required…”
Her options there were limited. Sundamar or Myrinel kept close watch, and relaxed though they were, they took their obligations seriously. This gnawed at her as the sands of the hourglass trickled ever downward.
“Anything we would need to retrieve is out of reach. Only what you have to hand – encountered in your daily routine – is available to us.” The phantasm sighed. “That leaves us little. We can’t do much of consequence without spells…”
Desperation swelled as the appointment drew closer.
“The meetings are in Almon’s home… knowing him, and his sentimentality, our belongings are still in the vault. Tolduin also has our dragon’s fire sigil — but all of these are useless while our mind is damaged! We can only use enchantments. If we were to make it to the vault, of what use would a Rod of Repulsion be against a wizard, a sorcerer, and an armed warden?”
Fear made her draconic visage increasingly frantic.
“Could we trick them into giving us more time? Perhaps make ourselves unwell? No, Tolduin is a priest: Sundamar would assume he can heal us.” She threw up her arms in dismay. “Then we have to resist the effects of the sculptor! But the moment we do that, he’ll know, and the second time will be worse than the first…”
Inexorably, she strolled toward defeat.
* * *
“There’s only one choice… a poor choice.”
Leant back against the closed door, her gaze upraised to the occluded heavens, the unreal yet truer Saphienne was on the verge of being vanquished.
“You have to do what you did the first time… but you have to do it before you submit to the sculptor. You need to create an association between the sensory experience of an object in your environment, your memories of Kylantha, and who you are.” She nodded toward her own countenance in the black-filled pane across the bedroom. “The book is our best hope. Tomorrow, you need to read it again, and think about Kylantha while you do. Make ‘All About Amphibians’ an extension of your memory, of your recollection of yourself; then leave it on the plinth where you’ll be sure to find it.”
She slumped. “I’m not confident you’ll prevail. There’s every possibility that the gambit depended on being under the influence of the sculptor; my fight against Tolduin might have wrestled minor control of the effect from him, enough to make my brain malleable and hide Kylantha away. That could be promising to explore, if we weren’t under imminent threat… and if I were in your place.”
Saphienne flexed her fingertips at the imagined presence, silently offering her companionship.
“…You’re right.” The dragon of her mind’s eye joined her on the bed, holding her hand in claws as she settled back on the pillows. “There’s no point in tormenting ourselves — we fly or we fall. We won’t be around to know if we fail. I love you, Saphienne.”
Lynnariel’s narration wove for them a small house of stacked stones atop imposing cliffs on which roosted the laughing gulls, while before them rolled the ocean, imperfectly imagined by a woman who had never seen any sea, yet for whom the sight was more precious than all the acres of the woodlands.
And Saphienne was happy.
* * *
No more than an hour: she poured herself into the pages, tracing the illustrations as she meditated on the painful loss that they had presaged. Neither she nor Kylantha had known that their childish argument over the toad would be so fundamental to Saphienne, yet their amicable dispute had led to them sitting together upon the windowsill of the library, the older reading aloud to her junior, pausing to puzzle through the unending questions that were – in the end, as like the passing conflict between them – really an expression of care.
Die cast, another carving called.
…Did it have to be a frog? What if it was the last she ever made?
She moved her tools aside to make room for the book on the nearest end of the workbench to her plinth, leafing to a picture that Kylantha had demanded they dwell upon.
Come midday, Gaeleath was complimentary of the beloved toad she was chiselling, delighted by the reproduction, so believably realised, as though it had leapt to life from the open page.
* * *
Saphienne ascended the stairs from the parlour in outward peace, inwardly terrified that she was climbing to her death.
Almon was absent. Tolduin rose from his chair to greet her, both armchairs having been turned to face where the chess board usually sat, the menacing gemstone occupying the tabletop with unyielding inevitability. “Good morning, Saphienne! Are you well?”
“Yes.”
“Please, take a seat.”
She smoothed down her dress as she did, a last act of pride.
The priest didn’t bother to ask questions; he was convinced she had no inner life worth investigating. He took his place opposite Saphienne and raised the sculptor, turning over the gem within the ring as he lowered it back to the surface, hand upon the band. “You know what to do: gaze into the light, and relax.”
Supreme in her deceit, Saphienne didn’t betray how deeply she missed Hyacinth, and Laelansa, and her mother as she willed herself to look. To die would have been bearable, perhaps to die alone, but to be unmade solely in the company of her hated adversary was so very bitter.
“Good girl. Now…”
* * *
‘Twas brilliant, and the sylvan boughs did gyre and gambol in the day! White upon unending blue the empyrean, sage the swaying trees, cornucopian in colour the flowers twining underfoot. Alike the little clouds joying in the sky, children frolicked in the glade, carefree in their unruly laughter, beloved by forest fair and sun supremely kind.
Most beloved was Saphienne, the reverent young girl, ten years young. Summer was in her golden hair, for like all elves, her locks delighted in the seasons. She was sun-kissed, skin akin to hazel bark, and delicate in stature; yet no tenderfoot was she, going barelegged and mirthful in the vale, as all good children ought. Her eyes were younger than her years, oft turned to the leaves that sheltered her, bright with wonder at their simple mysteries …
* * *
She was thoughtlessly compliant when Sundamar took her home.
No one, not even her mother, discerned any difference.
* * *
Alas, Gaeleath arrived before the girl, and helpfully tidied for her, moving the book back to its peers — and taking the opportunity to dust the assembled volumes, sadly scanning over the poem before placing it beneath the reordered pile.
She didn’t notice when she later took up her appointed position, preoccupied by the frog she was eager to make that day.
“Saphienne, you’re going against the grain…”
She ignored them as she scraped.
Gaeleath shook their head, resigned to her inconstant improvement as they went back to their stone.
Had they not intervened? It wouldn’t have mattered. The book was just a book.
* * *
But her hands remembered. The narrow yet wickedly sharp chisel struck against her routine, scraping, snagging, forcing the dead matter to take on life, hewing from what had lived and died a shape that was not dissimilar to that which had last been fashioned, seeing with fresh eyes that were unfocused as their green grew vibrant, fixated on images that played out in the wreckage behind them, played and laughed and danced and screamed and screamed and called her name as they were snatched and dragged from her despite her protest, whereupon the resurrected verdant in her gaze lowered into depths well fathomed, darker than any moonless night, hotter than the roaring flame that she willed would scour the writhing, monstrous branches in whose shadow she had been imprisoned since the fated day of her birth — then soaring from their nadir to shine vivid green, verdant green, the colour of winter’s death and the first, most tremulous fingers of spring that reached and reached and would never rescind, not even were they cut down.
Saphienne quietly smiled.
End of Chapter 141